Highlights of Our Signed First Edition Programs

Mysterious Galaxy is pleased to offer two special programs for our customers interested in signed first editions.

Our Signed First Mystery program and our Signed First Speculative Fiction program are designed to help readers add books we feel offer special merit to their collections. The emphasis of the Signed First Mystery program is on debut mystery titles. The Signed First Speculative Fiction program spotlights speculative fiction titles of interest, not always by debut authors.

Our most recent Signed First Edition picks are listed on this page, as well as a sampling of some of our past picks. Please check with the staff to confirm signed quantities are still on hand.

Make sure you indicate you are interested in these programs in your subscription to The Virtual Plot. You can update your profile at any time by clicking the "Update Profile / Email Address" link at the bottom of each electronic newsletter.

Year Zero is when aliens first discovered that we Earthlings
had a talent for music¹. The rest of cosmos, it would seem, sucks at its
creation. Sucks so bad that the first Earth music to reach them, during the end
credits of Welcome Back, Kotter, caused many an alien to die in apparent
ecstasy. Go figure. And don’t get me started about when real music finally
reached alien auditory structures². Anyway, years go by and the time is now,
and our music has a bit of an intergalactic cult following³. And these aliens
now realize they have a bit of a problem. They’ve been listening to our music
FOR FREE for decades and by our laws … and theirs … they owe Earth a bit of
money … okay, a lot of money … okay, so much money that the entire cosmos of
music-loving beings owes Earth every single unit of commerce ever devised since
the Big Bang. So, what to do? Well, you’ve got your nicer aliens who want to
cut us a deal, and your not-so nice aliens who would just blow up the planet
and have done. Enter our hero, Nick Carter. No not that Nick Carter, the
other one … the probably-about-to-be-fired mid-level New York copyright lawyer.
To save Earth, Nick will have to become Larger Than Life and make those pesky
aliens Quit Playing Games. For More than That, you’ll just have to read the
book.

Year Zero is a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy4
for the new millennia, designed for Men in Black … and any other sentient being
with a sense of humor. And aside from being laugh-out-loud funny, Year Zero
is also quite informative. Did you know you could be fined $150,000 per
illegally downloaded song or movie? Or that this fact might just lead to
Earth’s destruction? Author Rob Reid, founder of Rhapsody, knows a wee bit
about this … and may just be in contact with extraterrestrial music
aficionados. Rock on!

¹ We call it 1977 … and
we know it mostly as the year Star Wars debuted, but I digress.

² It wasn’t pretty.

³ Galactic
understatement! They’ve actually patterned the universe after us ... in their own
way ... and Everybody speaks English.

First Contact. But not as you would expect. An astronaut finds an
egg-shaped crystal while collecting garbage in Space, touches it, and
things get very interesting very quickly. "Join us!" But is this the
first such stone to fall into mankind’s hands? Meanwhile, on the surface
of the Earth and beneath the sea, life marches on. A world famous
science fiction writer does his bit for kin and country. A star reporter
becomes a hero and then becomes something much more. A lowly scavenger
makes a significant discovery while diving off of the coast of his
flooded country. A billionaire playboy is “rescued” by a pod of rather
intelligent dolphins. Just a few of the multiple viewpoints that
populate Brin’s future Earth, an Earth on the brink.

Existence is so full of Brin-ish ideas and concepts that I
don’t even know where to begin. Alien contact, divergent human species,
artificial intelligence, smart mobs, global warming, differing (often
bickering) alien philosophies, mankind’s place in the universe, human
history turned on its end ... the transparent society, social upheavals,
terrorist attacks, Awful Day ... and much much more. All of this in an
incredibly thought-provoking and faced-paced story ... each page loaded
with a sense of wonder and optimism that is often lacking in today’s
science fiction. This one’s sure to be on many an awards shortlist. It’s
that good. And lastly, I hope this is just the start of something
because I really need to know what happens next. So David, where’s my
next book?